Program Notes
Guest speaker: Sergey Baranov
Sergey Baranov
Year this lecture was recorded: 2017
The path to peyote for a Russian seeker named Sergey Baranov. Throughout communities spanning the Americas, Sergey explored plant medicines and even faced a near-death experience before finally settling in Peru and founding the ‘Cactus House’ where he now leads ceremonies.
Sergey Baranov’s Website:
http://shamansworld.org/
His Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/huachumawasi/
Path: Seeking Truth in a World of Lies by Sergey Baranov
https://www.amazon.com/Path-Sergey-Baranov/dp/1480040711/
“Mescaline: An Ancient Medicine for the Soul” by Sergey Baranov
https://wakeup-world.com/2017/05/06/mescaline-an-ancient-medicine-for-the-soul/
“Huachuma – The Visionary Cactus from the Peruvian Andes” by Sergey Baranov
http://www.wakingtimes.com/2017/06/19/huachuma-visionary-cactus-peruvian-andes/
Meetings with Sergey Baranov: Sacrifice Your Fears for Your Vision
http://astore.amazon.com/matrixmasterscom/detail/154421460X
Altered Conference 2017 - BERLIN
3 - 4 November 2017
https://www.alteredconference.com/
Use the code
PSYCHEDELICSALON
at the checkout for a discounted ticket
TantraPunk Podcast 126 with Lorenzo
https://tantrapunk.com/decrypting-the-cyberdelic-revolution-with-lorenzo-hagerty-tpp126/
This Is Not A Drill Podcast 39 with Lorenzo
https://superorganism.space/
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Transcript
00:00:00 ►
Greetings from cyberdelic space.
00:00:19 ►
This is Lorenzo and I’m your host here in Psychedelic Salon 2.0.
00:00:24 ►
And I’m going to do something a little different here today.
00:00:28 ►
As you know, I usually make my introductions to the Salon 2.0 podcast somewhat brief.
00:00:33 ►
But today, while I’m still going to keep my introduction of Lex Pelger’s interview brief,
00:00:39 ►
before that, I’m going to pass along a couple of announcements,
00:00:41 ►
and then I’m going to tell you a story, a story about
00:00:45 ►
what happened to me 50 years ago today. So if you’re mainly interested in Lex’s interview,
00:00:51 ►
you can fast forward and just listen to the last 50 minutes of this podcast. Otherwise, here we go.
00:00:59 ►
First of all, I’d like to let you know about an interesting psychedelic conference that’s going
00:01:04 ►
to take place about a month from now.
00:01:06 ►
It’s called the Altered Conference, and it was started by Dax, who is one of our fellow Saloners.
00:01:12 ►
This year, the Altered Conference is going to be even bigger than last year and has over 30 talks, workshops, and rituals about psychedelics and altered states of consciousness.
00:01:45 ►
Thank you. Ketamine and DMT for otherworldly voyaging, and much, much more. Now, if this conference was in California, I’d try to be there.
00:01:48 ►
But, alas, it’s being held in Berlin.
00:01:52 ►
So I recommend that our European slauners try to get there if they can,
00:01:56 ►
because, well, it’s going to be a great place to find some of the others.
00:02:00 ►
And for more information, you can go to alteredconference.com.
00:02:03 ►
That’s all one word, alteredconference.com.
00:02:07 ►
And if you buy a ticket there, you can use the code PSYCHEDELICSALON, all one word, all caps.
00:02:12 ►
And use that at the checkout and you’ll get a discount at alteredconference.com.
00:02:18 ►
Now, in just a minute, I’m going to tell you one of my stories.
00:02:22 ►
But if you’re a glutton for punishment and want to hear even more
00:02:25 ►
of my wild tales, well, there are two new podcasts for which I’ve been interviewed lately, and
00:02:31 ►
well, you can catch more of me there. The first one is TINAD, which stands for This Is Not A Drill
00:02:37 ►
podcast, and you can find that at superorganism.space, and it’s their podcast number 39.
00:02:44 ►
superorganism.space, and it’s their podcast number 39.
00:02:50 ►
The other podcast I was on was episode 126 of the Tantra Punk podcast,
00:02:53 ►
which you can find at tantrapunk.com.
00:02:57 ►
And I’ll put a direct link to that in today’s program notes,
00:02:59 ►
which you can find at psychedelicsalon.com.
00:03:03 ►
And as best as I can remember,
00:03:06 ►
I don’t think that I repeated any of my stories in either of those interviews
00:03:07 ►
and by the way you might also want to check out
00:03:10 ►
some of the other programs in those very excellent podcast series
00:03:13 ►
now I’d like to take a few minutes
00:03:17 ►
to tell you a story that
00:03:19 ►
well I’ve never told it in detail to anyone before
00:03:22 ►
it’s about something that happened to me 50 years ago today,
00:03:26 ►
which would make it October 3rd, 1967. At the time, I was the CIC officer on a Navy destroyer,
00:03:34 ►
the USS Hopewell, and for the previous two days, we had been steaming in company with two other
00:03:40 ►
destroyers. The three of us were providing protection for the aircraft carrier
00:03:45 ►
USS Oriskany, and we were on our way from Sasbo, Japan to Yankee Station in the Tonkin Gulf.
00:03:52 ►
We had been maintaining a speed of 27 knots almost all that time, and at that rate of speed our old
00:03:58 ►
World War II non-FRAM destroyer was running low on fuel, so our little convoy slowed down so that the
00:04:05 ►
Oriskany could refuel us.
00:04:07 ►
At the time, we were just entering the South China Sea, about midway between Taiwan and
00:04:13 ►
the northernmost island of the Philippines.
00:04:15 ►
When it was our turn, we came alongside the Oriskany to take on fuel.
00:04:19 ►
It was around 3.30 on a beautiful sunny afternoon when the two fuel hoses were slid over to us and the high wires that we had rigged between our two ships, and then we began receiving fuel fore and aft.
00:04:33 ►
As the Combat Information Center officer, the CIC officer, my duty during UNREPS was, well, it’s essentially to do nothing other than to sit in CIC along with some of the men of my division.
00:04:46 ►
Other than the one man who was watching the long-range radar for us,
00:04:50 ►
no one else had any significant function to perform.
00:04:54 ►
Most of the men were gathered around a chart table,
00:04:56 ►
where our old Chief Petty Officer was presiding with his tales about what it was like in the old Navy,
00:05:03 ►
as if being on one of the Navy’s oldest functioning destroyers
00:05:07 ►
wasn’t Old Navy enough for them.
00:05:09 ►
I was over near the electronic countermeasures equipment,
00:05:12 ►
sitting on a tall stool.
00:05:14 ►
I don’t know what the men were talking about,
00:05:16 ►
but I was daydreaming about my pregnant wife back in San Diego.
00:05:21 ►
You see, that day also happened to be our first wedding anniversary, and yet we were
00:05:27 ►
thousands of miles apart. Now, I’d like to interrupt my little story here and just mention something
00:05:33 ►
that military families already know quite well. You see, whenever you hear someone thanking a
00:05:39 ►
service member for their sacrifices, if you haven’t been in the military yourself, you may think that with the big
00:05:46 ►
new bases and the modern ships that their physical sacrifices are actually minimal. But the real
00:05:52 ►
sacrifice that service members and their families make isn’t physical. It is the long separations
00:05:58 ►
from one another that are the hardest sacrifices. And when there’s also the danger of war involved, the mental pain of
00:06:05 ►
separations is even greater. So there I was, lost in a melancholy reverie, when after we’d been
00:06:12 ►
alongside, receiving fuel from the Eriscany for about a half an hour, the 1MC shipwide loudspeaker
00:06:19 ►
system came alive, and we heard the voice of our captain shouting, stand by for collision.
00:06:25 ►
Well, before we could even begin to comprehend what he had just said, there was a huge crunching sound as we hit
00:06:31 ►
the Eriskanese starboard side. And then all the lights went out. Along with most of the men in CIC,
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I was thrown to the floor and for a brief moment until our emergency lighting came on, I was as afraid as I’ve ever been.
00:06:46 ►
We had no idea what had happened.
00:06:49 ►
I’ll spare you the minute details, but what had happened was that the big electric motor that drove our huge rudder,
00:06:56 ►
and it was a single rudder ship, well, that motor dropped offline and caused us to lose steering.
00:07:02 ►
But if you’ve ever been on the bridge of a ship during a Navy unwrap,
00:07:06 ►
you know that even a few degrees change in the helm doesn’t kick in immediately.
00:07:11 ►
And so it took a half a minute or so before the people on the bridge realized that they had no steering.
00:07:18 ►
And by the time that they realized they had lost control of the ship,
00:07:21 ►
well, there was no time for an emergency disconnect.
00:07:26 ►
So we scraped down the side of the Oriskany, rocking into it and back again and throwing us around, and in the dark
00:07:31 ►
of CIC, I’m sure that I wasn’t the only one who was wondering if my end was near. On deck, I later
00:07:38 ►
learned, there was a hectic race to get out of the way of the stretching fuel hoses and the big wires holding them up.
00:07:50 ►
The collision was so violent that it tripped our boilers offline, causing us to lose all power,
00:07:56 ►
and as we bounced down her side, dead in the water, fuel began to rush out of the hoses as the wires snapped and great chunks of our superstructure were twisted and torn off.
00:08:02 ►
Fortunately, the hole that was punctured in our hull was far enough
00:08:06 ►
above our waterline that we could proceed on our own to Subic Bay in the Philippines for
00:08:10 ►
repairs before returning to the Tonkin Gulf. Now, there are two more little pieces of that story
00:08:17 ►
that I have yet to tell. The first is the fact that only moments before we collided with the
00:08:22 ►
carrier, she had raised her aircraft elevator
00:08:25 ►
that had been lowered when we first came alongside. Had that elevator still been down when we had the
00:08:30 ►
collision, well, it probably would have scraped off most of the superstructure of my ship right
00:08:35 ►
at the deck line, including the combat information center where I had been so lazily dreaming only a
00:08:41 ►
few minutes earlier. The raising of that elevator may have
00:08:45 ►
saved my life. But here’s another thing that raising that elevator brought about. Had it still
00:08:51 ►
been down when we hit, not only would it have scraped our deck clean, it would have probably
00:08:56 ►
caused enough damage to the Urisconi that it too would have had to break off from its mission at
00:09:01 ►
Yankee Station and head to Subic Bay for repairs. As it was,
00:09:06 ►
we sustained most of the damage and the Oriskany managed to do their less extensive repairs while
00:09:11 ►
still at sea. Now, 23 days later, while out on Yankee Station, the Oriskany launched another of
00:09:19 ►
its daily airstrikes on North Vietnam. But that day, one of its pilots didn’t return. He was shot down and
00:09:26 ►
held a prisoner for five years. His name is John McCain. Years later, our paths crossed once again.
00:09:35 ►
Actually, it was our swords that crossed that time, but that’s another story.
00:09:40 ►
As I’ve said earlier, I’ve never told this full story to anyone before.
00:09:44 ►
At the time, since it involved the readiness of ships at war, it was classified. As I’ve said earlier, I’ve never told this full story to anyone before.
00:09:49 ►
At the time, since it involved the readiness of ships at war, it was classified.
00:09:55 ►
And while I always thought about it on my wedding anniversaries, I don’t remember ever bringing it up.
00:10:00 ►
There were times, however, when I’d wake myself up and my partner at night,
00:10:05 ►
screaming because I was having another Navy nightmare, and they usually had something to do with that collision. But several years ago, I learned that by having a few tokes of cannabis
00:10:11 ►
before I go to bed, I thankfully don’t have those Navy dreams anymore. Well, now it’s been 50 years
00:10:19 ►
since that event, and it’s an experience that’s still etched indelibly in my mind.
00:10:30 ►
However, having just now transported myself back in time so as to remember this story,
00:10:36 ►
I now find it hard to believe that 50 years have passed since then.
00:10:38 ►
It seems like only a day.
00:10:44 ►
And so this might be an interesting thing for you to do the next time you’re with one of your older family members. Ask them what they were doing 50 years ago on that day, and once they figure it out,
00:10:49 ►
then ask them how they got from there to here. It should get them started telling a few of their
00:10:55 ►
own stories, and if my guess is right, they’ll be really thankful to have somebody to tell them to.
00:11:01 ►
And now that I’ve finally told this story, well, I have to admit that I feel a lot better.
00:11:07 ►
I think that I can finally let it go.
00:11:09 ►
But I’ll still be having a few tokes before bedtime,
00:11:13 ►
just in case.
00:11:15 ►
So thanks for listening.
00:11:17 ►
Now, at long last,
00:11:19 ►
here is Lex Pelger with today’s program. this work monthly on patreon.com. As a two-person production, any help goes a long way. Join us at
00:11:48 ►
patreon.com slash nononsense. I’m Lex Pelger, and this is a Psychedelic Salon 2.0.
00:12:01 ►
Welcome to our interview with the author and shaman Sergei Baranov.
00:12:10 ►
He’s quite an intriguing character, going from life in Russia to a community in California,
00:12:13 ►
and then finally finding his path to the sacred cactus.
00:12:19 ►
In his book, Path, Seeking Truth in a World of Lies,
00:12:26 ►
he covers his life as a cult member, a coffin salesman, a real estate broker, and a devotee, always seeking.
00:12:31 ►
Things started to click for him after he read the words of Alexander Shulkin.
00:12:36 ►
There are many shamans scattered around the world. Search for them.
00:12:46 ►
Sergei’s path took him to Mexico, to the deserts of the southwest states, and finally to South America, where he now lives with his wife and young daughter. Along the way, a near-death experience that you’ll hear about
00:12:51 ►
changed everything. If you’d like to see more, Ben Stewart, who we’ll be hearing from next week,
00:12:58 ►
made an excellent film about Sergei’s work and ceremonies. In addition, we’ll be linking to some of our favorite pieces of his writing
00:13:05 ►
in the episode notes.
00:13:07 ►
As Shulgin said, keep seeking.
00:13:15 ►
I am here with Sergei Baranov, who is currently in Peru
00:13:18 ►
and helping to do the work for practitioners
00:13:21 ►
looking to learn more about plant medicines.
00:13:25 ►
Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us here on the Psychedelic Salon 2.0.
00:13:28 ►
Thank you, Lex.
00:13:29 ►
Great to be here.
00:13:30 ►
So before I learn more about your story, which is great, and talk about your book, I wonder
00:13:36 ►
if you could just tell us some more about the long history of these mesclun-containing
00:13:42 ►
cactuses and how long they go back with humans?
00:13:46 ►
Okay, well, it will be a long conversation in itself.
00:13:50 ►
That’s okay.
00:13:51 ►
So what archaeologists are telling us is that this tradition goes back at least 3,000 years.
00:14:03 ►
And how do you know this?
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back at least 3,000 years.
00:14:04 ►
And how do you know this?
00:14:05 ►
There is a place called
00:14:07 ►
Chavin de Huantar, which is
00:14:09 ►
the temple
00:14:11 ►
of Chavin culture
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in the central Andes
00:14:15 ►
of Peru.
00:14:17 ►
And it
00:14:19 ►
is
00:14:20 ►
thought to be the cradle
00:14:23 ►
of Ande Indian civilization.
00:14:27 ►
And
00:14:27 ►
the temple itself
00:14:30 ►
was uncovered in
00:14:32 ►
1919
00:14:33 ►
by archaeologists. It was completely
00:14:36 ►
underground.
00:14:38 ►
And since then, they
00:14:39 ►
excavated and found interesting things.
00:14:42 ►
So they radiocarbon
00:14:44 ►
dated organic matter, which they found there,
00:14:48 ►
bones and, you know, all that can be dated.
00:14:52 ►
And this is the number they came up with, 3,000 years.
00:14:56 ►
Now, personally speaking, when I go there and take the medicine there
00:15:01 ►
and my teacher lives there, this is his home, basically, physically and metaphysically.
00:15:09 ►
I get the feeling that it’s a much older culture, something that goes well beyond recorded history.
00:15:18 ►
So this is just the feeling of antiquity that you get there on the medicine. But even if it’s just 3,000 years, which is proven,
00:15:25 ►
that’s pretty long time
00:15:29 ►
for unbroken tradition to survive.
00:15:33 ►
All the upheavals
00:15:34 ►
and then the 16th and 15th centuries,
00:15:39 ►
you know, conquista and survived that
00:15:42 ►
and still went through
00:15:44 ►
and reached our day.
00:15:46 ►
So in the temple, you can see, you know, the whole iconography is anthropomorphic.
00:15:53 ►
So half human, half animals.
00:15:56 ►
And the cactus huachuma, or small as San Pedro, present everywhere.
00:16:02 ►
It’s like a central image of the whole thing.
00:16:08 ►
Now, actually, you can see this behind my back.
00:16:12 ►
Do you see that?
00:16:13 ►
That is Huachumero.
00:16:14 ►
This is an exact copy of the image carved on the central plaza in the Chivinde Huantar.
00:16:23 ►
It’s a half-man, half-jagger holding the cactus
00:16:25 ►
in his hands,
00:16:27 ►
which
00:16:28 ►
can be understood in different
00:16:31 ►
ways. One way is
00:16:34 ►
you know, it’s like, it’s a message
00:16:38 ►
to future generation
00:16:39 ►
and it’s a message
00:16:41 ►
that has objective meaning,
00:16:44 ►
which means it cannot be misinterpreted by people.
00:16:48 ►
It’s not like a text that you can read and understand differently.
00:16:52 ►
Here we are.
00:16:55 ►
Hold on to the cactus, and it will be okay.
00:16:58 ►
That’s the message, you know.
00:16:59 ►
So that’s how I see it.
00:17:01 ►
And he’s ecstatic, and he’s good, and you can tell.
00:17:09 ►
And if anybody wants to see the image, it’s also on Sergei’s website at shamansworld.org.
00:17:17 ►
And it is very striking, a very clear cactus message right there in your face.
00:17:24 ►
Yes.
00:17:25 ►
So it’s a half jaguar, half man, which is the central deity of Chivin culture, holding
00:17:32 ►
the cactus inside.
00:17:33 ►
So to me, it’s a very clear message and I follow that.
00:17:42 ►
And how did your own journey begin with these plants that finally led you to San Pedro?
00:17:49 ►
Well, that’s a story of my life, you know, and I spoke about it in my book.
00:17:56 ►
Early on, I was interested in, you know, spirituality and esoteric stuff and, you know, awakening and Eastern philosophy and all that.
00:18:07 ►
And during the time when I was in my early 20s, I used what I could during that time,
00:18:18 ►
which at that time was ecstasy.
00:18:20 ►
That was my favorite thing.
00:18:21 ►
That was my favorite thing.
00:18:34 ►
And I saw a key to that world, which I want to learn more about in that tool.
00:18:37 ►
So for me, it was a tool.
00:18:40 ►
I never really took a pill just to be stupid, you know.
00:18:51 ►
It’s just I took it to think, to feel, to understand, and it served well during many years. I really thought that that’s the only thing there for me to do the work I want.
00:18:59 ►
And that’s living in the, you know, back then I was living in Israel and, you know, there are no
00:19:04 ►
really sacred plans there at the time.
00:19:06 ►
It just was psychedelics and street drugs and whatever.
00:19:11 ►
So, of course, I went through many of those, but never to escape reality, rather to engage reality.
00:19:21 ►
So I had to try different drugs and realizing that this is not that and that’s not
00:19:26 ►
that. And, you know, and then you kind of move from drugs to psychedelics. And then you realize
00:19:33 ►
that, yes, of course, that’s the gate, you know, that’s the doorway. And you continue with that.
00:19:42 ►
And you continue with that.
00:19:50 ►
But then, later on, when I already moved to the States and the search continued,
00:19:57 ►
then I realized that now it is actually possible to look for shamans.
00:20:03 ►
Because it was just not possible to do it from where I was at that time.
00:20:07 ►
And it was very interesting who actually
00:20:11 ►
motivated me. It was Alexander Shulgin,
00:20:16 ►
which is interesting. I always loved the guy.
00:20:21 ►
But when I was
00:20:23 ►
searching, I saw his website, and on the website it was when I was searching I saw his website
00:20:26 ►
and on the website it was a banner
00:20:28 ►
you know
00:20:30 ►
seek for shamans, they scatter all over the world
00:20:32 ►
and that was quite
00:20:34 ►
an interesting statement because
00:20:36 ►
the guy is a scientist
00:20:38 ►
hardcore
00:20:39 ►
professor in biology
00:20:41 ►
pharmacology, whatever
00:20:43 ►
the guy is a scientist, you know.
00:20:46 ►
It’s a love man.
00:20:47 ►
And here he is telling you, go look for shamans.
00:20:51 ►
So I took it in a way that I’m just going to do it.
00:21:00 ►
And I started to search for them.
00:21:02 ►
And quite quickly, you know, I found people in Peru who were seriously working with medicines.
00:21:09 ►
So I contacted them, and I came, and this is how everything started in 2005.
00:21:14 ►
So I came to Amazon, and it was like a five-week retreat.
00:21:20 ►
Started from ayahuasca, then moving to the cactus huachuma.
00:21:25 ►
In the end, this is actually where I am now.
00:21:28 ►
And this is how it begins.
00:21:29 ►
And since that point, of course, everything, it’s kind of, well, no more pills at that point.
00:21:41 ►
And, you know, when you get to the medicine, then you realize what’s real ecstasy.
00:21:47 ►
And with all respect to the MDMA stuff, you just realize that this is just a level.
00:21:53 ►
It’s just another level.
00:21:54 ►
You know, it’s the organic ecstasy, the pure, the good, and the best, you know.
00:22:01 ►
So that’s kind of the story.
00:22:06 ►
And the story goes on. It’s an excellent book. And one of the things you mentioned that doesn’t get known well enough is that MDMA or ecstasy
00:22:13 ►
is actually derived from the mescaline molecule, which comes from this old plant, cactus.
00:22:19 ►
That’s very interesting. That’s another point. Later, when I was looking at Shulgin’s videos, you know,
00:22:26 ►
his interview, and I thought he was
00:22:28 ►
a very interesting person, you know,
00:22:29 ►
that has to be studied.
00:22:31 ►
And in one interview he spoke about
00:22:34 ►
his masculine
00:22:36 ►
experience that changed his life.
00:22:39 ►
Completely
00:22:40 ►
torn. The masculine experience
00:22:42 ►
that he described
00:22:43 ►
gave shape
00:22:44 ►
to his whole life.
00:22:49 ►
He was so inspired that he started to look into this dimension and try to make it available in a different way.
00:23:00 ►
And that’s how I understood.
00:23:01 ►
and that’s how I understood.
00:23:04 ►
So there was connection between mescaline,
00:23:06 ►
which was derived from the peyote at the time,
00:23:11 ►
and then MDMA and, you know, all that story.
00:23:13 ►
So there is more connections there, you know.
00:23:14 ►
It’s like, I said, like, yeah, of course,
00:23:16 ►
I understand what he’s speaking about when he’s speaking about colors that he never saw in his life
00:23:19 ►
and the depth and all that.
00:23:21 ►
It was very interesting.
00:23:22 ►
So to me, it was a confirmation that that’s the,
00:23:26 ►
that’s where it’s going,
00:23:27 ►
you know?
00:23:28 ►
And of course,
00:23:29 ►
if you like ecstasy,
00:23:31 ►
then for sure you will like masculine.
00:23:34 ►
They’re very much,
00:23:35 ►
you know,
00:23:37 ►
there is a difference,
00:23:38 ►
but they are from the same family.
00:23:40 ►
I would say just that the MDMA had that chemical flavor to it,
00:23:46 ►
which it’s very hard to deal with, you know.
00:23:48 ►
And it’s just a price that you have to pay for a few hours of magic, you know.
00:23:53 ►
So here, there is no price.
00:23:57 ►
And the journey is much longer.
00:23:59 ►
And you pay nothing in that terms.
00:24:02 ►
So it’s like, with all respect to the chemical, here it is something that you can take with much – at lower – much lower cost, physically speaking, psychologically.
00:24:18 ►
And what can you tell us about the effects of mescaline itself and then also mescaline in the context of all the other alkaloids in the various cacti that get used.
00:24:28 ►
Well, I can speak from my personal experience.
00:24:31 ►
I never took mescaline, you know, extracted mescaline.
00:24:36 ►
I never took it and I will not do that because personally I believe that when you bring a plant to the lab, you kill its spirit.
00:24:50 ►
That’s how I feel it.
00:24:51 ►
You know, it’s like the auto-ed is there, the experience is there, but you kill the plant.
00:24:57 ►
You kill the spirit of the plant.
00:24:58 ►
So shamanically speaking, it’s not the best way to do it.
00:25:02 ►
The best way is to take the whole plant from the ground,
00:25:07 ►
and then you take the whole spirit of it with you.
00:25:09 ►
You eat the earth with it, the whole planet with it.
00:25:14 ►
And from what I can tell, I can only compare this experience
00:25:19 ►
with other people who had, like Aldous Huxley,
00:25:23 ►
who speaks about his masculine
00:25:25 ►
experience indoors of perception,
00:25:28 ►
which is totally mystical.
00:25:30 ►
He definitely tapped into the
00:25:32 ►
mystical dimension of it, for sure.
00:25:35 ►
But yet, I
00:25:36 ►
don’t see
00:25:37 ►
in his description
00:25:39 ►
the emotional part,
00:25:42 ►
that nature-based
00:25:44 ►
empathy and connection, that is missing.
00:25:48 ►
And I think because there was no plan, but rather an alkaloid extraction,
00:25:55 ►
given in the glass of water in the apartment in LA,
00:26:01 ►
it’s not exactly how you get into the, into the bottom of it.
00:26:08 ►
So the masculine itself, the masculine, uh, well, the Wachuma experience, it’s a very, very,
00:26:15 ►
it’s a heart consciousness, you know, it opens you up, it connects you deeply to who you are
00:26:21 ►
deep down in your heart, who you are. And down in your heart who you are
00:26:25 ►
and through that connection
00:26:27 ►
you connect to nature
00:26:28 ►
and through nature
00:26:30 ►
you connect back to yourself.
00:26:31 ►
So it’s a very, very
00:26:32 ►
kind of symbiotic experience
00:26:35 ►
and you become one
00:26:36 ►
with the whole.
00:26:39 ►
You really
00:26:39 ►
you really become
00:26:43 ►
self-aware as you can. You know, it’s a self-aware as you can.
00:26:47 ►
It’s a self-awareness.
00:26:49 ►
You become conscious of yourself, conscious of yourself and the world you’re living around.
00:26:55 ►
And everything makes sense suddenly.
00:26:59 ►
Everything makes sense.
00:27:00 ►
You’re no longer searching.
00:27:02 ►
You’re no longer craving.
00:27:04 ►
You know.
00:27:05 ►
It’s the knowing that comes in it. And it’s
00:27:07 ►
not really always
00:27:09 ►
intellectual, although it is a very
00:27:12 ►
philosophical plant in a sense.
00:27:14 ►
You get a lot of insights into everything.
00:27:16 ►
But it’s not even there
00:27:18 ►
anymore, you know.
00:27:19 ►
The healing, the deep soul healing
00:27:21 ►
comes in that connection, in that
00:27:23 ►
being, in that state of being where you are.
00:27:27 ►
You are and you’re good and you’re happy and you’re in love.
00:27:35 ►
Just a pure love with the whole thing.
00:27:37 ►
And it’s a very coherent experience.
00:27:40 ►
You’re not going anywhere.
00:27:42 ►
You’re actually coming in.
00:27:45 ►
That’s how I would describe it.
00:27:47 ►
So it’s a very, very steady in that sense, a very grounding medicine.
00:27:51 ►
You are here.
00:27:52 ►
You are now.
00:27:54 ►
You’re just more aware of who you are in the whole thing, of the whole life.
00:28:00 ►
And it’s a very ecstatic medicine.
00:28:02 ►
It’s a long journey.
00:28:04 ►
It’s about 12 hours, 14 hours.
00:28:06 ►
You know, it depends how strong the brew is.
00:28:08 ►
It can go for longer.
00:28:11 ►
And we spend the time in nature, always nature.
00:28:14 ►
We drink in nature.
00:28:15 ►
We’re just there contemplating the beauty in silence.
00:28:20 ►
Because silence, this is where I found the gate to understanding.
00:28:27 ►
It’s a,
00:28:28 ►
it’s where you can,
00:28:30 ►
a place where you can quiet your mind and open your heart and just feel,
00:28:36 ►
just feel the world,
00:28:38 ►
feel life,
00:28:39 ►
feel the universe.
00:28:41 ►
So it’s a very loving,
00:28:44 ►
kind medicine.
00:28:49 ►
That’s beautiful. I would be curious what you hear from people who it’s their first time
00:28:56 ►
experiencing this and what advice you might have for people who would want to
00:29:00 ►
prepare themselves for their first time if they were interested?
00:29:06 ►
Well, it really depends on the person.
00:29:08 ►
It’s really what you bring to it.
00:29:10 ►
We do what we do, and what you bring to it gives a flavor to the experience.
00:29:16 ►
But preparation, there is no dietary preparation that I can see.
00:29:23 ►
I just don’t believe in that.
00:29:26 ►
That’s not how I work with it. That’s not how my teachers work. We don’t do any diets. We eat what we
00:29:30 ►
want and just in the morning we don’t eat. We do it on the empty stomach and let the
00:29:37 ►
medicine, you know, easily absorb in your body. And then you have dinner at night. So
00:29:41 ►
the first ceremony, you know, you just have to
00:29:45 ►
know why you do it, you know.
00:29:47 ►
You just have to really
00:29:48 ►
look inside and feel
00:29:51 ►
that place from which you
00:29:53 ►
want to touch a sacred plant.
00:29:56 ►
And it’s, you know,
00:29:57 ►
any plant or
00:29:59 ►
any psychedelic experience
00:30:01 ►
should be coming from that place.
00:30:03 ►
It’s why you want to do this.
00:30:06 ►
You have to kind of see a certain search inside that leads you to that or at least a healthy curiosity
00:30:13 ►
you know but never kind of recreational and just kind of get away thing and
00:30:21 ►
an escape thing you know because it’s not.
00:30:25 ►
It’s actually a very engaging medicine.
00:30:27 ►
It brings you right where you are and makes you think and see and makes you work in a good way.
00:30:35 ►
But, you know, there is a certain demand from you.
00:30:39 ►
There is a certain commitment that you have to bring to this.
00:30:42 ►
So it’s really mental.
00:30:42 ►
commitment that you have to bring to this.
00:30:44 ►
So it’s really mental.
00:30:45 ►
You just come with trust.
00:30:47 ►
Trust in yourself.
00:30:50 ►
Trust in the medicine. Trust in the person who gives you the medicine.
00:30:53 ►
And that’s it.
00:30:54 ►
That’s really
00:30:55 ►
probably
00:30:56 ►
all you can do. You just come sincere.
00:31:00 ►
Sincere in your intention.
00:31:02 ►
Open-minded, open-hearted and ready
00:31:04 ►
for a new experience
00:31:06 ►
and then see how it unfolds
00:31:08 ►
and then take from there
00:31:10 ►
that’s good
00:31:11 ►
and be prepared to work
00:31:12 ►
because you
00:31:14 ►
had quite a long journey
00:31:17 ►
the name of the book
00:31:17 ►
Path Seeking Truth in a World of Lies
00:31:21 ►
it’s a great look at the different places you went
00:31:24 ►
and so it was a start in the Andes,
00:31:26 ►
but then a temple in Arizona for your next experiences?
00:31:31 ►
Yes, I think, yes.
00:31:33 ►
Peru, then I was in Peru, actually.
00:31:34 ►
It was interesting when I was on Uechuma in the jungle.
00:31:38 ►
This is when the first time I thought that now I can actually find peyote.
00:31:43 ►
It just become possible at that moment. So I thought, okay, when I come back, I’m just going to search find peyote. It just became possible at that moment.
00:31:46 ►
So I thought, okay, when I come back,
00:31:48 ►
I’m just going to search for peyote shamans
00:31:50 ►
and have the experience.
00:31:52 ►
And I found people in Arizona.
00:31:55 ►
It’s a peyote way church.
00:31:58 ►
Very good people,
00:31:59 ►
and they’re running the peyote ceremonies
00:32:01 ►
in their own way.
00:32:03 ►
It’s not really Native American ways.
00:32:05 ►
They are doing their own thing.
00:32:08 ►
And I went there, Kantok Dan, and came there, had the Piyote experience,
00:32:14 ►
and it was, of course, very beautiful and very much alike to Wachuma.
00:32:21 ►
Both are masculine cactus, but, you you know with a different flavor to it and then from there
00:32:27 ►
i realized that i can now look for you know mexican shamans and see what what’s going on there
00:32:37 ►
you know i’m kind of going back to carlos castaneda which i read when i was 20 and i thought
00:32:41 ►
like you know this world is now uh within reach i just failed it so like, you know, this world is now within reach.
00:32:46 ►
I just felt it.
00:32:47 ►
So there was, you know, so I was kind of let there.
00:32:51 ►
And then, you know, next thing I know, I’m sitting with Indian shamans
00:32:55 ►
in Sierra Madre and taking medicine, taking P.O.D. with them.
00:33:00 ►
So it was really great.
00:33:04 ►
You know, it was beyond what I could wish for.
00:33:08 ►
And what practices do you learn from the huichol in terms of holding space for this?
00:33:15 ►
Well, we did it in a different way there. The huichol ceremony is there. It’s like a three-day ceremony. It’s a long process.
00:33:28 ►
Bringing deer.
00:33:29 ►
It’s a big thing, actually.
00:33:31 ►
So we really didn’t do that.
00:33:33 ►
I’ve been with rituals there.
00:33:35 ►
But we did it in a way that I wanted it more.
00:33:39 ►
They really respected my wish.
00:33:44 ►
And they probably saw that that would be most beneficial for me.
00:33:50 ►
And that was simple, fire on the ground, all night taking medicine under the stars, you know,
00:33:56 ►
and just kind of going through it in prayers and songs, but with as little structure as possible.
00:34:03 ►
And the peyoteers that were with us,
00:34:06 ►
they were eight years old people,
00:34:08 ►
I mean, lifelong peyote people,
00:34:10 ►
so they enjoyed it a lot.
00:34:13 ►
And there was a lot of joy in it.
00:34:14 ►
There was a lot of depth, a lot of magic,
00:34:20 ►
but it was silent, mostly.
00:34:23 ►
So I don’t know if I took from there how to hold the space.
00:34:30 ►
It was at that time, it was not about holding space for me.
00:34:34 ►
At that time, it was finding my path, just finding my truth.
00:34:38 ►
So it was a bit different journey there.
00:34:42 ►
But it was very important, of course.
00:34:45 ►
If you read the book,
00:34:47 ►
you get to the point when I
00:34:49 ►
get to that shamanic initiation
00:34:51 ►
which came
00:34:54 ►
through death.
00:34:56 ►
Would you care to share that
00:34:58 ►
story? Sure.
00:35:00 ►
It was my sixth
00:35:01 ►
time when I came there. It was November
00:35:04 ►
00:35:06 ►
And it was just one of those times, just regular going there to see my friends, take some medicine.
00:35:13 ►
But this time was different.
00:35:15 ►
And somehow it felt different.
00:35:17 ►
And it was a bit tense, the tension in the air.
00:35:21 ►
And I could feel it.
00:35:23 ►
It’s like I came and I didn’t feel very welcomed
00:35:26 ►
and I said, well,
00:35:27 ►
maybe I just
00:35:28 ►
go home.
00:35:31 ►
And the people who were waiting for me,
00:35:33 ►
they were tense somehow.
00:35:36 ►
So I said,
00:35:37 ►
you know what, I’m already here, so I’m not
00:35:39 ►
giving up.
00:35:41 ►
I’m not that person.
00:35:43 ►
I went there, I’m doing this.
00:35:45 ►
Whatever is there. And we started the ceremony and the whole thing went differently and the
00:35:50 ►
shaman I won with I was with he said that you know you have to build that my
00:35:58 ►
you know that’s kind of circle of mud around the fire and be very careful as you do it because the way you do it will be
00:36:06 ►
the way you do it will determine your future so i feel like uh you know
00:36:16 ►
some kind of uh you know uh intimidation in this like okay so i’m going to build that circle in the
00:36:23 ►
dirt in my life going
00:36:25 ►
to depend on that or whatever i’m just going to do it the best i can anyway you know so somehow
00:36:31 ►
he knew that is going something going to be something going to happen but
00:36:35 ►
for sure nobody actually knew it’s just an intuitive thing that you follow your intuition, but nobody actually knew what’s coming.
00:36:48 ►
I don’t believe for a second.
00:36:50 ►
And I did that, and we started the ceremony, and everything went natural.
00:36:55 ►
And I took the cup, another cup, another cup, and I drank there a lot.
00:37:02 ►
And at midnight, it was a full moon, at midnight he asked me to bless the water as I was a firekeeper, you know, and I blessed the water, I drank some water, I gave him, put him to the earth.
00:37:14 ►
And I remember we sat in silence right after that and I was having my stick, you know, organizing the wood in the fire
00:37:26 ►
and my last words were
00:37:28 ►
Piotr is real
00:37:29 ►
that was my understanding
00:37:32 ►
this is real
00:37:33 ►
and this is what I was searching for
00:37:36 ►
actually
00:37:37 ►
and
00:37:38 ►
as I said a few minutes after that
00:37:42 ►
I felt
00:37:43 ►
you know extinct in my legs.
00:37:48 ►
And I, you know, I jumped off the mat and I kind of got scared and like, what the hell is going on here?
00:37:55 ►
You know, that’s not, that doesn’t, you know, that’s a different energy here.
00:38:01 ►
You know, I got stung by something and i took my pants and i look and they knew right
00:38:05 ►
away what happened but he didn’t tell me right away he just said you know just relax don’t panic
00:38:10 ►
because you make it worse you know like what is going on and then within 20 minutes i started to
00:38:16 ►
feel so sick that you just need to lay down on the mat by the fire and that’s it and then the whole
00:38:23 ►
hell unfolds so i was stunned by by deadly scorpions, you know,
00:38:27 ►
right like an inch below my genitals.
00:38:31 ►
And for the next 18 hours, I was completely paralyzed in agony.
00:38:38 ►
Like you don’t have vision, you don’t have anything.
00:38:42 ►
It’s like you’re just purely conscious of yourself.
00:38:44 ►
You’re conscious in your body you’re realizing that you’re
00:38:47 ►
you know that you’re right there and that’s pretty much it for you you know and then
00:38:56 ►
with every hour you become like totally you lose your body completely because this
00:39:03 ►
venomous neurotoxin,
00:39:06 ►
so it attacks your nervous system and shuts down the whole thing.
00:39:09 ►
That’s how people die from it.
00:39:10 ►
You kind of choke on your own saliva because you can’t breathe.
00:39:15 ►
Everything stops, and that’s it.
00:39:17 ►
So what peyote did, it helped me to breathe very little, but enough to survive. And it’s also
00:39:26 ►
I think it blocked my liver
00:39:28 ►
from getting killed too.
00:39:30 ►
So it gives me the strength to survive,
00:39:32 ►
but there was
00:39:34 ►
a personal
00:39:35 ►
journey in it,
00:39:38 ►
realizing
00:39:39 ►
how much I love life.
00:39:42 ►
And it was, you know,
00:39:44 ►
I was dying, basically.
00:39:45 ►
You know, the death was right there.
00:39:47 ►
And I’m, what, 32.
00:39:50 ►
So I was not scared.
00:39:52 ►
I was not afraid to die.
00:39:54 ►
But it was very disappointing, you know.
00:39:56 ►
I feel like, you know, I just found my path.
00:39:58 ►
I just found that which was looking all my life.
00:40:02 ►
And now that’s it?
00:40:05 ►
It’s just, just no.
00:40:08 ►
No.
00:40:10 ►
And I started to fight for my life
00:40:12 ►
and going through this.
00:40:14 ►
And it was finding your inner strength
00:40:19 ►
to push the death away.
00:40:22 ►
So it was three days of hell.
00:40:25 ►
18 hours complete paralyzed.
00:40:26 ►
Then you’re kind of fighting and kind of getting your sense back together and moving and standing and laying down because you’re so sick and agony.
00:40:39 ►
And then the next night, you don’t sleep three nights.
00:40:41 ►
You know, you feel like you have electricity over your body.
00:40:45 ►
Like you feel like you’re plugged in to, you know, nuclear power plant for, you know, 72 hours.
00:40:51 ►
So there is not much sleeping there.
00:40:54 ►
It’s horrible.
00:40:56 ►
It was very difficult physically and, you know, psychologically experience.
00:41:02 ►
But, you know, and the shaman said when I was already lying down,
00:41:07 ►
because I was totally conscious, I could hear him.
00:41:09 ►
He had to drink the whole peyote we had, you know, like a bucket of peyote was all for him.
00:41:15 ►
And, you know, he was just drinking medicine and making the fire and keeping me warm,
00:41:19 ►
which I didn’t feel warm at all.
00:41:21 ►
I feel like I’m freezing to death.
00:41:23 ►
I actually didn’t know if I will die from the venom or I will die from being cold.
00:41:29 ►
You know, you feel like your soul become an ice, you know, ice.
00:41:35 ►
So, and then the sun came and it’s Mexico, it’s very hot, but still you feel the same.
00:41:40 ►
So it was very, very cold for three days inside yourself.
00:41:46 ►
But he said,
00:41:48 ►
I cannot do anything, you have to go through it.
00:41:50 ►
So by that time he knew that
00:41:51 ►
that was
00:41:53 ►
my
00:41:56 ►
initiation into that world.
00:41:58 ►
And it’s
00:41:58 ►
interesting because it happened with this guy.
00:42:01 ►
And this guy, he’s known,
00:42:03 ►
he’s like
00:42:04 ►
70 now, he takes POD for 50 years, he knows interesting because it happened with this guy and this guy he’s known you know he’s like a
00:42:05 ►
70 now he takes period for 50 years he knows he known in north american around the pod people you
00:42:13 ►
know and it’s interesting that he had his own initiation into this world through rattlesnake
00:42:21 ►
by and he spent five days with period dying.
00:42:27 ►
So he knew exactly what’s happening.
00:42:29 ►
I mean, it’s like I took his medicine.
00:42:33 ►
It’s like I was initiated through him, and this is the medicine.
00:42:37 ►
So that’s why his name is rattlesnake.
00:42:39 ►
His shamanic name is rattlesnake.
00:42:40 ►
Everybody knows him like that.
00:42:54 ►
And he told me later that although I got more than enough venom to die, I have to be grateful that I was not initiated by the rattlesnake.
00:43:01 ►
So I said, OK, well, it’s hard to imagine how much worse it can get.
00:43:03 ►
It was pretty bad.
00:43:07 ►
So that was the thing. And that was my last time i went to mexico after that i never went back and
00:43:11 ►
yeah we are in touch we’re talking and uh he before i left he said that i will be grateful
00:43:22 ►
forever for that experience which which at that time I
00:43:31 ►
wasn’t sure very much. I just wanted to leave and go home and kind of like,
00:43:45 ►
not sure about that. It was a bit beyond all you can imagine. So when you have peyote in your blood and the venom at the same time,
00:43:47 ►
the agony and the ecstasy.
00:43:51 ►
So, you know, it’s a very unique experience, which you wouldn’t wish for.
00:43:55 ►
Like, if I would know that that was, you know, the thing to do,
00:43:59 ►
I don’t know, I might not go there.
00:44:01 ►
And I think, you know what, thank you.
00:44:03 ►
I think I would be okay without that.
00:44:08 ►
That’s why you never asked for that thing.
00:44:10 ►
It’s just been taken.
00:44:14 ►
And that’s it.
00:44:15 ►
And there you are.
00:44:16 ►
And now, of course, it was, what, nine years passed.
00:44:19 ►
So I look back and it’s just as mysterious as it was then.
00:44:24 ►
There is no new insights into it.
00:44:27 ►
There is nothing beyond what I felt then.
00:44:32 ►
It’s the same thing.
00:44:33 ►
It’s the same mystical, magical event.
00:44:40 ►
But I’m grateful for that for sure because I do feel that I base my work now on that experience.
00:44:48 ►
I feel like I earned my rite of passage doing that.
00:44:54 ►
So I understand his words and forever grateful, just as he said.
00:44:59 ►
So that’s pretty much in details.
00:45:03 ►
Well, in some details.
00:45:05 ►
Wow, that is an amazing story.
00:45:07 ►
And it makes me think of Humphrey Osmond,
00:45:08 ►
who you mentioned in your book,
00:45:09 ►
to fathom hell or soar angelic,
00:45:12 ►
take a pinch of psychedelic,
00:45:14 ►
and some scorpion stings, apparently.
00:45:18 ►
Wow, that is…
00:45:19 ►
You can add that to the brew.
00:45:21 ►
Add that to the brew.
00:45:23 ►
And so it was the grateful experience he said.
00:45:27 ►
Did it through that help you to realize that you would yourself be a practitioner as well?
00:45:33 ►
Not at that time.
00:45:34 ►
Not at that time, no.
00:45:35 ►
I went back to California and there were a few more events.
00:45:39 ►
And then I realized that it’s my time to move to Peru.
00:45:41 ►
Something I wanted to do during the three years I was coming here before,
00:45:45 ►
taking the medicine, working with shamans, but I was not ready to actually make a move and actually serve the medicine.
00:45:51 ►
So after that experience, as I went home and a few months’ path, I felt that something changed.
00:45:57 ►
And there was a meeting with Hawk and Owl in which I realized that this is my time
00:46:06 ►
and it was like a green light.
00:46:09 ►
You know, it was, the doors were open.
00:46:11 ►
So, you know, I took my cats,
00:46:15 ►
you know, and moved to Peru.
00:46:18 ►
Since, and, you know, living here since.
00:46:21 ►
And what was it like to jump from
00:46:24 ►
a comfortable life in the United States to
00:46:26 ►
starting over in Peru with this intention in mind? Yes, you know, certainly it’s
00:46:33 ►
difficult because, you know, you live in America and you have certain standards and you have a
00:46:40 ►
certain comfort. And now you’re going to Peru to Andes,
00:46:46 ►
where life is much more primitive than that.
00:46:49 ►
And, you know, there is a cultural shock for sure.
00:46:54 ►
But, you know, I was traveling here three years, so I understood how things are.
00:46:59 ►
I felt it already.
00:47:01 ►
I saw it was not the first time.
00:47:02 ►
But still, I realized that it’s going to be hard
00:47:05 ►
and I came without any money.
00:47:07 ►
I just had very
00:47:10 ►
little to start with, but I didn’t care. I felt
00:47:12 ►
like it’s my path and I’m going
00:47:13 ►
to do it. I’m going to follow my heart.
00:47:15 ►
I’m going to serve this medicine because this is my medicine.
00:47:18 ►
And this medicine
00:47:19 ►
that satisfies
00:47:21 ►
my inner
00:47:23 ►
thirst that nothing else could before that.
00:47:29 ►
So I was ready to die here.
00:47:31 ►
I was ready to stuff to death.
00:47:32 ►
It didn’t matter.
00:47:33 ►
I thought, like, it’s better I die, you know, on my knee or on my, you know,
00:47:38 ►
foot walking my path than living somewhere in, you know, in disconnection
00:47:47 ►
path than living somewhere in you know in disconnection and kind of in material world without any hope so for me it was okay i just came here and i started over and of course
00:47:59 ►
it’s my third immigration so i’m kind of a veteran that is like you know from
00:48:05 ►
Soviet Union went to Israel and from Israel into America from America here
00:48:09 ►
that’s my you know fourth country so I’ve been in this shoes before and it’s
00:48:14 ►
always hard and you know what’s there for you it’s you know that for few years
00:48:19 ►
you feel dumb because you can’t talk and you will feel like you you know it’s just not
00:48:26 ►
fit in a new environment so you understand that’s what’s going to happen it’s not language it’s not
00:48:34 ►
culture and it’s starting over and it’s going to be difficult you understand that it was a
00:48:39 ►
conscious thing you know it was a conscious decision to come and meet myself you
00:48:46 ►
know it was a challenge to myself but was a good challenge is it was a you
00:48:53 ►
know on the way to my towards my destiny towards my happiness so any price you
00:49:01 ►
pay worth it that’s how I saw it. So yes, it’s difficult.
00:49:06 ►
Yes, it’s challenging.
00:49:07 ►
But you understand why you’re doing that.
00:49:11 ►
And I’m curious about the challenge of transitioning from someone who is taking the medicine to someone who is now providing the medicine.
00:49:21 ►
Yeah, well, it came very quick.
00:49:23 ►
It’s just I came to Peru within a few first months.
00:49:27 ►
I already had my first ceremony.
00:49:29 ►
Before when I came, all I was doing here was just taking medicines,
00:49:34 ►
walking the mountains and enjoying the beauty
00:49:37 ►
and looking for beautiful places to bring people to.
00:49:44 ►
And it was kind of natural to me.
00:49:49 ►
It was not a one-day drama kind of thing.
00:49:54 ►
No, it just was a natural thing.
00:49:55 ►
And I invited a few people around, you know, made good medicine for them.
00:50:00 ►
It was a beautiful day.
00:50:00 ►
And these were people who already were serving medicine for many years.
00:50:05 ►
So I brought them.
00:50:07 ►
They had a great time, and I realized that this is it.
00:50:12 ►
You know, I can do it.
00:50:13 ►
I can do it because intuitively I felt that, you know, although there is a certain initiation into it and blessings from other people, yes, there is that.
00:50:32 ►
But still, it’s not really by the lineage.
00:50:35 ►
That’s what I understood.
00:50:36 ►
It’s more by exploration.
00:50:40 ►
It’s available.
00:50:41 ►
It’s here for you if you’re up to it.
00:50:44 ►
That’s how I felt.
00:50:45 ►
It’s not like somebody has to come and give me that diploma.
00:50:51 ►
You can do it now.
00:50:54 ►
Even though I had that too, I had blessings from the shamans.
00:50:57 ►
But that’s not – it was just like on top of this.
00:51:01 ►
It’s like, thank you, great.
00:51:03 ►
Makes me feel better.
00:51:04 ►
But still I do that because I feel like I have of this. It’s like, thank you, great, makes me feel better. But still I do that
00:51:05 ►
because I feel like I have the right,
00:51:09 ►
the same right
00:51:10 ►
as anybody else. If I’m
00:51:12 ►
up to it, if I’m cold and I’m up to it,
00:51:14 ►
then that means I can.
00:51:16 ►
So it’s more by
00:51:17 ►
exploration than by lineage.
00:51:20 ►
You have to come from the line
00:51:22 ►
of shamans, has to be in your
00:51:23 ►
blood.
00:51:25 ►
I feel like this hierarchy
00:51:28 ►
it’s
00:51:29 ►
it’s
00:51:32 ►
less spiritual than
00:51:34 ►
spirituality of the
00:51:36 ►
planet itself
00:51:37 ►
it was certain
00:51:39 ►
really hierarchy of things
00:51:42 ►
it’s almost like a
00:51:44 ►
caste system in India.
00:51:46 ►
You know,
00:51:47 ►
you’re born in this caste and that’s it until next reincarnation.
00:51:50 ►
You know,
00:51:51 ►
it was like,
00:51:51 ►
no,
00:51:52 ►
I’m not,
00:51:53 ►
I’m not buying into it.
00:51:55 ►
I don’t believe in caste and don’t believe in,
00:51:57 ►
um,
00:51:58 ►
you know,
00:51:59 ►
all that stuff.
00:52:00 ►
I believe in,
00:52:00 ►
uh,
00:52:02 ►
personal experience.
00:52:04 ►
I,
00:52:04 ►
I born as human here on this planet, and these are the plants that are growing here,
00:52:08 ►
and I have the right to work with them and explore them.
00:52:13 ►
That’s it.
00:52:14 ►
And you do it with respect, with love and dedication.
00:52:18 ►
So that was kind of how it started for me.
00:52:21 ►
So, of course, it created conflicts around.
00:52:23 ►
Of course, there were people who were coming and saying,
00:52:26 ►
you know,
00:52:26 ►
you are a gringo, you know.
00:52:29 ►
You don’t have the right to do that.
00:52:31 ►
It’s like, we are the people
00:52:33 ►
of the land. So, there was
00:52:36 ►
this conflict,
00:52:38 ►
you know, but I just went through it.
00:52:39 ►
It’s like, it doesn’t matter. I take the medicine
00:52:41 ►
and I love it.
00:52:44 ►
So, who is going to stop me?
00:52:46 ►
It’s like just me.
00:52:48 ►
If I believe that that’s the truth, then I’m the only block on my way.
00:52:53 ►
So you’re just going through it.
00:52:54 ►
It’s like, no, my medicine loves me.
00:52:57 ►
I mean, it loves to come through me because I love my medicine.
00:53:02 ►
So we are one.
00:53:03 ►
So it comes through me.
00:53:05 ►
I have that permission from the medicine, from the spirit itself.
00:53:09 ►
I mean, who else do you need?
00:53:10 ►
I don’t need approvals from people.
00:53:14 ►
It’s hard to explain more how it feels.
00:53:20 ►
Yeah, but I could see that causing local conflict, for sure.
00:53:25 ►
It was. It was in the beginning. Not anymore. I went through that.
00:53:30 ►
But it started that way.
00:53:34 ►
When I was younger and just came here, and you have less support than you have now.
00:53:40 ►
So it was easy to kick me out of the of the way in a sense now it’s just impossible
00:53:47 ►
and now you have uh what you call the cactus house uh correct yeah yeah right here in the
00:53:55 ►
cactus house and i love this part so you dipped each uh brick in the juice of the cactus yeah
00:54:03 ►
yeah yeah it was you know it was i was thinking how uh how i can get closer to the juice of the cactus. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. It was, you know, I was thinking how I can get closer to the spirit of the plant.
00:54:10 ►
I was drinking the juice.
00:54:11 ►
I was eating the flesh.
00:54:13 ►
What else I could do to get closer?
00:54:16 ►
And then in one ceremony, I thought, like, you know, if I build a house,
00:54:22 ►
I would make sure that every brick soaked in the medicine.
00:54:26 ►
So you kind of create a cactus for yourself.
00:54:28 ►
You live in the cactus.
00:54:30 ►
And that’s what happened.
00:54:31 ►
We started to build a house soon after.
00:54:34 ►
And I cut lots of cactus around, hundreds of them.
00:54:39 ►
And just put them in a big building cylinders.
00:54:44 ►
And they were there.
00:54:45 ►
And all this juice was put on the bricks.
00:54:50 ►
So every brick has medicine absorbed in it.
00:54:55 ►
So the whole house is built from that.
00:54:57 ►
So you’re actually living in the cactus house.
00:55:01 ►
That’s why I’m calling it cactus house.
00:55:03 ►
And it’s a very, you know, I thought it was quite unique.
00:55:08 ►
That’s un-unique, and it sounds like a great space to have ceremonies.
00:55:12 ►
And can you tell me a little bit about your ceremonies and what’s important to you as you run them?
00:55:17 ►
How we do it? Yes.
00:55:18 ►
Well, we always, you know, drink outside in nature.
00:55:22 ►
We go out, so we have beautiful places around, beautiful river,
00:55:26 ►
beautiful rocks, sacred sites.
00:55:28 ►
It’s all here around. We go out
00:55:30 ►
early in the morning, like 9,
00:55:32 ►
and we start
00:55:34 ►
the ceremony there
00:55:35 ►
with minimum structure,
00:55:38 ►
just showing
00:55:39 ►
respect,
00:55:41 ►
blowing some smoke, and
00:55:43 ►
helping people to focus
00:55:45 ►
and relax and take the medicine.
00:55:48 ►
And then I encourage everyone
00:55:49 ►
to find their own place around.
00:55:52 ►
Well, together, but it’s not like
00:55:53 ►
you’re not sitting next
00:55:56 ►
to each other. You find your tree and you find
00:55:58 ►
your rock. Well, here in that forest.
00:56:00 ►
But nobody
00:56:02 ►
in your space.
00:56:04 ►
It’s important to have your own privacy.
00:56:08 ►
And then I encourage people to embrace silence.
00:56:12 ►
And that goes for the first three, four hours, because this medicine has two phases.
00:56:18 ►
First, it’s a passive, very passive and very, you feel kind of lucid dreaming and you want to lay down, close your eyes,
00:56:26 ►
and the medicine comes and kind of scans you and heals you on that level
00:56:30 ►
and you feel held like in the mother’s hands, you know.
00:56:34 ►
So it goes for three, four hours.
00:56:37 ►
So you don’t want to be active that time.
00:56:39 ►
You don’t want to force intellect or any physical activity.
00:56:43 ►
You just want to embrace it and let the medicine unfold.
00:56:47 ►
And then at a certain point
00:56:48 ►
it wakes you up. You just realize
00:56:50 ►
that that’s it. You don’t want to sleep
00:56:52 ►
anymore. You just wake up and then
00:56:53 ►
you look around and it’s a very
00:56:55 ►
much contemplative state when
00:56:58 ►
you really see the beauty around
00:57:00 ►
and really connecting. And this is
00:57:02 ►
one time to kind of write thoughts and
00:57:03 ►
things about thing and,
00:57:05 ►
you know, and do some walking later.
00:57:09 ►
So mostly it’s in silence.
00:57:12 ►
I do talk to people in private, you know,
00:57:14 ►
when I feel like somebody needs a talk.
00:57:17 ►
It’s intuitive thing.
00:57:19 ►
If I see you sitting there, you know, with a smile like this,
00:57:22 ►
then you don’t need me. You just enjoy your time.
00:57:26 ►
But if I see someone crying
00:57:28 ►
and kind of
00:57:29 ►
getting a bit
00:57:31 ►
scared, then it’s the time to
00:57:34 ►
give support. So you just come and you just give support
00:57:36 ►
with your presence, sometimes with words,
00:57:38 ►
sometimes just
00:57:40 ►
take a walk a little bit. You just bring people back
00:57:42 ►
to that
00:57:42 ►
confidence. that’s it
00:57:46 ►
and then it’s kind of a wave
00:57:48 ►
and then wave path and then you’re okay
00:57:50 ►
for the rest of the day, you know
00:57:51 ►
so it’s providing support when needed
00:57:53 ►
and it’s important to remove yourself
00:57:56 ►
from the experience because it’s not really about me
00:57:58 ►
it’s about you
00:57:59 ►
taking the medicine
00:58:01 ►
and having the experience
00:58:03 ►
so I’m there to hold it, to support it, but to a minimum possible.
00:58:09 ►
You know, otherwise it will be about me.
00:58:12 ►
And then it’s kind of growing into a cult.
00:58:14 ►
That’s what you don’t want.
00:58:15 ►
You know, you want to keep it clean and experiential, private and sacred.
00:58:22 ►
Experiential, private, and sacred.
00:58:35 ►
With confidence and with support and all you need until you get more experience and feel confident more and you need less of that.
00:58:37 ►
Great. Thank you. It sounds wonderful. So if people want to come and visit you, they can find you at shamansworld.org?
00:58:48 ►
you they can find you at shamansworld.org yes oh i uh through facebook page i open a you know make a facebook page which is wachuma wasi and that’s our place here is the name of our place and
00:58:54 ►
wachuma wasi means the cactus house in quechua the language of the land wasi is the house and
00:59:01 ►
wachuma is the name of the plant so So it’s Wachuma, Washi.
00:59:06 ►
And I post pictures from ceremonies and place inside.
00:59:13 ►
So people get a good view of where they’re going, where they need to stay, and the places around.
00:59:22 ►
So trying to keep it interactive.
00:59:24 ►
And it’s a beautiful, comfortable place, you know,
00:59:28 ►
because I realized that that was missing for me personally as a Westerner,
00:59:33 ►
going to, you know, Mexico and sleeping on the ground
00:59:36 ►
and having my back hurt.
00:59:39 ►
And it’s like, you know, I would appreciate some hot shower,
00:59:42 ►
some Wi-Fi to talk to my folks, you know.
00:59:44 ►
It’s like you don’t have it there.
00:59:45 ►
It’s like you’re completely isolated.
00:59:47 ►
And there is a good thing in it.
00:59:51 ►
Of course, it helps you to completely disconnect and unplug from your ordinary life.
00:59:56 ►
But at the same time, for me personally, it was hard to take medicine and not to talk to my folks and not to know what’s going on at home.
01:00:04 ►
So it was kind of emotional uh ache so i thought you know there is no need for that we can create it in
01:00:12 ►
the sense that you come home and you talk to your children your wives your parents whoever you want
01:00:17 ►
to talk and they’re all good and it’s okay and it gives you that comfort so there is no need to create that extra suffering.
01:00:25 ►
The work itself is demanding.
01:00:28 ►
So you can
01:00:29 ►
make it nicer while providing
01:00:32 ►
people
01:00:33 ►
with basic things they need.
01:00:35 ►
Good hot shower, good Wi-Fi.
01:00:38 ►
So everything is
01:00:39 ►
okay. You’re here and everybody’s there.
01:00:42 ►
But during the day, we go
01:00:43 ►
out. So it’s a combination of things.
01:00:47 ►
It’s a balanced experience.
01:00:49 ►
That sounds wonderful.
01:00:51 ►
Thank you so much for sharing.
01:00:53 ►
We’re going to be linking to your book and some of your articles
01:00:57 ►
and your website in the episode notes.
01:01:01 ►
And, yeah, just thank you so much for sharing your wisdom
01:01:03 ►
and providing the cacti. Thank you very much. sharing your wisdom and for providing the uh the cacti
01:01:05 ►
thank you very much it’s uh it’s fun to talk to you
01:01:09 ►
thanks for listening to the psychedelic salon 2.0 to help us, you can leave a review or rating on your favorite podcast service
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01:01:32 ►
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